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10 May 2013

Today I am reviewing The Last Timekeepers
and the Arch of Atlantis by Sharon Ledwith. She is a fellow Musa Publishing author and is commemorating the anniversary of the release of her first book with a month-long celebration.

Stop by her blog for a chance to win all sorts of great prizes and for the opportunity to check out her book!

The theme
of children leaving their boring old world and travelling into a faraway realm
filled with mystery and adventure is a common one in literature, whether it’s
out the window, into the wardrobe, or through the looking glass. Yet Sharon
Ledwith has managed to add some interesting elements to the premise in her book
The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis. First, her children are a
few years older than is usual. Plus, they are actually accompanied by a couple of
adults. Also, the children have the opportunity to affect human history, past
and future.

Ledwith’s
book begins with a food fight in the middle-school cafeteria. The five students
who get in trouble for it might not have been the ones who started it, but they
are the ones who got caught. Choosing a few days of hard labour over
suspension, the five come together despite their differences to start serving
their sentence. They begin cleaning up the dilapidated backyard of one of their
teachers--a woman who is rumoured around school to practice witchcraft. When
the young landscapers discover an old forgotten stone arch, their world begins
to turn inside out.

The main
point-of-view character is Amanda Sault, a young girl with the heart of a poet,
who comes from a somewhat troubled home life. She is the key which enables the
Arch to open. And when it does, Amanda, her four schoolmates, their teacher,
and the uncle of one of the kids, a recently disgraced archaeologist, journey
into, through, and beyond the arch, arriving in what is described as the
remnants of Atlantis. There they meet Lilith, the keeper of the arch, who tells
them that they have been chosen to be the last timekeepers, guardians of
history.

With Amanda
serving as Scribe, the one to record the group’s missions, the seven are
transported to thirteenth century England where--or rather, when--they must
protect a young Robin Hood and his “band of merry teens.” Robin and his
friends, along with the legend that will inspire so many generations afterward,
are under threat from the machinations of the conniving Professor Crowley,
servant of Belial, the evil entity who is using another Atlantean arch to send
human history into chaos.

The group
must work together to solve riddles, to escape traps, and to rescue the past
and its future in order to set the path of history right. A spiraling adventure
which deftly combines compelling visions of various points of the past with a
fresh point of view from the present.

Young adult
or middle-grade are not genres I explore very often. Of course, my usual fare
of contemporary and classic adult literature is not something I have had much
chance to read very often lately either, at least not since I began pursuing a
degree in Elementary Education. It seems all I’ve read in the past three years
has been children’s books (a trend that has only doubled since my wife and I
had twins just over a year ago--twins who, thankfully, love being read to).
Anyhow, the characters seemed a bit stereotypical at points. And while that may
or may not be true, it is true that the many kids from middle-school
tend to make themselves stereotypical in their attempts just to fit in. The
same might also be said, in the case of this book, of many kids from the
middle-ages. So, perhaps the author has hit on an important point of
authenticity. Also, the students do begin as a chance collection of disparate characters, yet, they seem determined not to let go of their adolescent animosity. The group of people chosen to
protect history did make some connections by the end, but one might figure
sharing such a revelation of destiny, as well as delving as a team into
harrowing adventures, would have brought them closer together before then. Still, perhaps the author has captured common teen-age stubbornness. Or perhaps she is simply saving some material for later, as there does
appear to exist a plethora of unresolved issues which promise to be explored in
future volumes.

The author
does a great job of capturing the voices of her characters, keeping them
authentic to their ages. It might be one of her greatest strengths as a writer,
and it’s an important one. That said, some of the constant insults tossed
between teenagers wore a bit thin. Reference to a certain feminine hygiene apparatus turns
up way too often. Also, I personally had trouble accepting the contrivance of a
pre-pubescent genius having the ability to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Really, though, these are minor quips which do not detract from the adventure
or the story as a whole.

I like the glimpse of Atlantis and
the juxtaposition of so many periods in history. Also, the plot-points of how
the troupe gets glances into the origins of what shall eventually become legend
along with all the inadvertent influences the group has in helping those
legends take root are skillfully written. A reader is compelled to wonder just
how much of history is really accurate and how much is totally misunderstood,
the wrong ideas being sent perpetually forward.

The author has said that the idea for this story came to her in a
dream some fifteen years ago and that she had been working on it ever since; so, some of
the dated feeling is understandable. The world has changed quite a bit since she began, and the author cleverly incorporates some of those changes without
drastically altering the story even while using them to her advantage. For instance, the
absence of cell phones, which--it’s easy to forget--were far from ubiquitous a
decade ago, is explained. Yet the very same device is used as an important tool
in one of the climactic scenes. Such editing maneuvers are difficult when one
has been writing and rewriting a story for so long. I admire Ledwith immensely
for her dexterity in that regard.

Some of my
favourite parts include of the descriptions of the shadows that lie within the
essence of Belial, Thirteenth Magus of the Arcane Tradition and keeper of the
fifth arch of Atlantis. They are stirring: “A dark mind that lives in the past to feed off the evil
energy continuing to stagnate there.” and “He is the shadow side of humanity — the voice
of knowledge, of suffering, of lies —” I hope Ledwith captures even more of
that kind of language in volumes to come.

Furthermore, some of the most
intriguing components of this tale may be what the author fleetingly mentions
yet leaves completely open for future stories. In fact, the author does extraordinarily
well to establish a world full of potential for other missions and other books.
The possibilities going forth--or back, as it were--are endless.

About Me

I live in Casper, Wyoming: a crossroads of rolling river and windswept mountain prairie. I write speculative prose and poetry and even the occasional essay. My principal influences include Poe, Kafka, Borges, and Archambault.
(Feel free to view my profile or click on my name above to contact me by e-mail.)